AmstradHero: Exterior Area Proofing Tips

AmstradHero has posted a great list of tips for proofing your areas over at the Vault. It's a good checklist of things to remember both before and after building your areas. He's got it posted as a very nice looking pdf, but I've duplicated it here as well (Rember to head over and give it a vote if you found it useful):

Here are a few guidelines for working with and improving your areas, whether prefab or not. It's useful to keep in mind as a sort of "final proof" of an area before finishing with it.

Terrain Tips:

Avoid Steep Edges

• Unless you have a specific need to do so, avoid having huge height differences over a short period. The textures will stretch vertically and will not look as good.
• This also applies to edges that are at a uniform incline over a large area. Breaking the slope up with a small flat section will improve its overall appearance dramatically.

Blend Textures

• Vary your opacity when laying down textures to get a blended edge unless there is a specific reason for not doing so.
• Paths don't immediately end in a sharp line, and dirt/grass should blend over the top of the edges in an uneven fashion.
• Don't blend too much, otherwise you'll lose definition in your texturing and the area will look too monotonous.
• Look at the minimap of your finished area – if there are large areas that repeat, blend.

Use The Colour Tool

• Use the colour tool to provide additional variance in your paths or grassy sections. Typically, use a colour that is similar to those of the nearby textures unless you are aiming for a specific look.
• Paint greens and browns over grassy/dirt sections, and use grey over mountain cliffs. Typically, gullies or depressions should be darker due to the implication that water would sit and make the ground damper and darker - though obviously this doesn't apply to deserts.
• Try using a little bit of brown and grey in "junction" areas that would see a lot of wear and tear.

Darken Terrain Underneath Placables

• A big way to improve the appearance of the terrain is to darken the area under and around placeables, typically with a grey brush. Keep the effect tight and focussed around the placeable.

Fix Your Walkmesh

• Do not leave your walkmesh at its default. Fix it so that rocky mountainous sections are not walkable, along with deep pools & lakes.
• Do use walkmesh cutters around your trees - this cannot be stressed strongly enough.
• Prefabs that have a good walkmesh are greatly appreciated by modders.

Placeable Tips:

Check Placeable Heights

• A beginner mistake that occurs lots is objects floating in the air. Just because a particular part of a placeable in sunk into the ground, it does not mean that part of it might still not be 'floating'. Make sure that this is not the case unless it makes sense for it to do so.

Use Height/Position Lock

• Double clicking on an object will cause it to raise up so its centre point is at the level of the terrain. Moving an object will also have the same result. Seeing as in many cases objects are "sunk" to provide a better effect, it is extremely annoying to have to reposition their height if this is done accidentally.
• Using the "Z" key to toggle height-locking on any selected objects, or the "*" key to lock their position entirely.
• Modders really appreciate this being done for prefabs, and it's a very good habit for builders to get into.

Convert Placeables to Environmental objects

• Any placeables in non-walkable areas of the map should be converted to environmental objects seeing as the player can never interact with them.
• Many placeables in walkable areas of the map should be converted to environmental objects as well. Any object the player is unlikely to interact with is a likely choice. Make sure you fix the walkmesh around them as described previously.

Sound Tips

Limit Non-Positional Sounds

• Carefully check the volume of any area wide-ambients - these should be used very sparingly, as a low volume is quite loud.

Adjust Intervals

• Non-looping sounds should have the "Random" & "Continuous" checkboxes ticked, but not looping.
• Increase the time between durations and also the interval variance.
• Make sure the sound will play only at appropriate times during the day/night.

Implement Variance

• Look at adjusting the volume and pitch variation on the sounds. Often a slightly softer sound with more variation can provide a more varied feel.
• Use positional variance. Remember that you can limit that positional variation to a single axis to focus a sound within a particular corridor, alleyway or gully.

Lighting Tips

Use Colour

• Don't use the default lt_white light. It's far too nondescript. Add some colour to your light, using warmer colours (yellow/orange) for a calming effect, or cooler colours (blue/green) to give a more ominous feel.
• Be careful not to use too much saturation unless you are aiming for a particular effect. For example, saturated green can give a sickly/diseased atmosphere, whereas bright red gives a hot and dangerous feel.

Tweak Your Day/Night Settings

• Pay attention to this for exterior areas. There are various lighting settings available on nwvault that might be useful. Take one of these and tweak.

Beware of Shadows

• Point lights will often have very heavy shadows. Set your shadow intensity to no more than about 0.4 in most cases.
• Lamp placeables will often need to have their shadow settings set to not cast shadows from point lights if you are using them with point lights.

Don't Overdo It

• Don't have too many lights close to each other. Look at their ranges and make sure you have no more than 3 or 4 lights overlapping at any given point.
• Shadow casting point lights are very resource intensive. Limit their use within an area.

Final Words

This is just a quick document to provide a few areas to focus on as the final touches for when producing an area – it's not intended to be a full area creation tutorial. I hope you find it useful to glance at before closing an area for the final time.

- AmstradHero aka Shadow Beast

Again, if you found this useful, make sure you head over to his Area Proofing Tips page on the Vault and give it a vote.

Anduraga's area building tips

One of my favorite builders when it comes to textures is Anduraga. He's given some great tips for the Waterdeep project and other projects over at the Weave. He recently posted a great list of tips for people looking to build good exterior areas. Here's his intro:

I find that many people find area building a very difficult task, and when they do make areas, they are often basic, because of the lack of tutorials, tips, etc. I can relate that to somewhat in a different department. Scripting isn’t really my strong suit, but I can manage to do the basics. But anyway, to the point of this post/thread. I have designed this thread to help new builders, adept builders and even master builders with tips and tricks of the trade. I haven’t checked out many of the tutorials on the vault (Shame on me, I know), so all this stuff I’m throwing out here now might already have been covered.

Check out his list of tips here:
http://nwn2forums.bioware.com/forums/viewtopic.html?topic=578694&forum=113

 

DLA Tutorial: Exterior Area

BenWH over at DLA has posted a great tutorial on creating exterior areas in the DLA Toolset forums:

Trying out the NWN2 toolset for the first time? Here are the results of my explorations on building an exterior area, combined with the wisdom of several others…

Read the full tutorial here:
http://www.dladventures.net/vB/showthread.php?t=3791

FRW: Texturing a good grasslands area

Phoenixus posted a great tutorial on texturing a good grassland area. Check it out here:

http://nwcitadel.com/forums/showthread.php?t=858

Importing terrain with YATT

You can import terrain data into the toolset to help build exterior areas using YATT. From the YATT website: 

Yet Another Terrain Tool (YATT) is a plugin for the Neverwinter Nights 2 Toolset allowing importing of terrain information (including heightmaps, colourmaps, texturemaps, etc) directly into the toolset. It does the importation of height, colour and texture data directly through the TRN stream, meaning it's reasonably nice and fast.

You can download the YATT plug-in form the vault. There's also a good tutorial on the vault for beginners by Laban. The YATT website also has a number of case studies and additional information.

One way that some builders generate terrain data is with L3DT. From the site:

L3DT is a Windows application for generating artificial terrain maps and textures. It is primarily intended for game developers seeking to make large high-quality 3D worlds (eg. for RTSs, MMORPGs, etc), as well as for digital artists who have designs for their landscapes and need a program to build them. 

Thanks to nicethugbert for point me in the direction of some of this (I read his sig on the forums). I've known about YATT for a while, but didn't have much luck with other mapping programs. L3DT seems to be more promising. Also check out NTB's Eroded Hills and Valleys, where he has posted some of the areas he generated with these two tools.

Layering textures and sounds

The layer with the highest percentage is the one that determines what sounds a creature makes when it walks on that area. Make sure you bake the area in order for the sounds to take effect.

NWN2 Mods: The Arena

Mike - aka Plane Walker, aka soulraven666 - over at NWN2 Mods has posted a step-by-step tutorial on creating a "roman Colosseum."

I thought I would detail the process I am going through in creating this Arena so this post is going to be an ongoing one that I continue to add to as I progress. Please feel free to reply with comments.

Head over to the NWN2 Mods forum and check it out:
http://www.nwn2mods.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=21

NWN2 Toolset: Areas

NWNmaster over at nwn2toolset.com has a great set of tutorials for creating areas. His current list of topics include:

Create an area
Interiors
All about Terrain
Texturing
Tips for creating an Area
Grass
About Water
How to add a Start Location
Create a waterfall
Create door transitions
Day and Night Settings
Walkmesh
Baking

Head on over and check it out:
http://www.nwn2toolset.dayjo.org/ToolsetTuts/area.html

NWN2 Toolset: Bridges

NWNmaster over at nwn2toolset.com has a great tutorial for placing a bridge.

After seeing a few people having problems with placing bridges I thought I would give it a go and see what the fuss was about. First thing I did was to create two raised areas like so:

Head on over and check it out:
http://www.nwn2toolset.dayjo.org/ToolsetTuts/placeables/bridge.html

TerraCoppa: Copying and rotating areas

A great tool for making changes to your area is TerraCoppa, by Tani. The most obvious benefit of this tool is being able to rotate areas, so that north matches with north. Here is Tani's description:

TerraCoppa is a toolset plugin allowing you to copy and rotate parts of one (exterior) area to another, including:

- terrain (heightmap)
- tinting (colors)
- textures
- gras
- water
- objects (creatures, placeables, ...)

of course you could copy objects via toolset as well, but it lacks the ability to copy or rotate terrain (heightmap).

Go grab the tool here:
http://nwvault.ign.com/View.php?view=NWN2PlugIns.Detail&id=25

Documentation is a bit light, but here is a quick rundown on how I got it to work:

1. Install the plug-in and restart the Toolset.
2. Back up your module!
3. Open your module and the area you want to rotate.
4. Create a new external area, of the same size.
5. Launch the plug-in from the Plug-ins menu.
6. Set the first area as the source and the new area as the destination.
7. Leave everything checked.
8. Look for the dropdown at the bottom of the screen and choose the amount you want to rotate the area. (90, 180, 270).
9. Click the green button and let it go.
10. Make sure you bake afterwards.

For additional reading, here is a thread on the forum talking about "North Direction" and rotating the area.
http://nwn2forums.bioware.com/forums/viewtopic.html?topic=558621&forum=113

The walkmesh helper

The walkmesh helper is a tool created by Zarathustra217 and apparently quietly slipped into the 1.05 patch.

I came across this post by TheStoryteller01 asking about making creatures hover above terrain. Grinning Fool posted some really amazing looking screenshots that he created using the walkmesh helper.

The walkmesh helper is a tool on the vault by Zarathustra217. Here's the description:

This is a simple package intended to make a builder's life easier. It consists of simple squared invisible placeables with a walkable walkmesh. When scaled, the Walkmesh Helper objects are handy to use along with Walkmesh Cutters (found under trigger) to have more control of the walkmesh. This especially is evident when using a combination of placeables, like several bridges. Place the Walkmesh Helper just above the walkable plane of the placeables, scale it to properly cover the desired area, and cut away with Walkmesh Cutters as fit. You might get the best result by converting the placeables to environment objects, but it shouldn't be required.

It is intended to work as an override, and doesn't require that the end users of your module have this package in place. They will still experience the effect it has on the walkmesh without it installed.

Here's the link:
http://nwvault.ign.com/View.php?view=NWN2HakpaksOriginal.Detail&id=27

Here's an additional tutorial on using this that Feargus Urquhart posted in the developer blog:
http://forums.obsidianent.com/index.php?automodule=blog&blogid=2&showent...

As far as I can tell, the tool on the vault contains a flat plane and a ramp, while patch 1.05 adds two flat planes: a stone version and a wooden version (I'm guessing these are for the footfalls.)

Warning: At the time of this writing, putting the walkmesh helper files in your override seem to cause problems with the official walkmesh objects that came out in 1.05. Hopefully OEI will add the ramp objects soon.

For those of you looking to use it for those annoying house placeables that don't allow you to actually walk up the stairs, try the ramp with a scale of 2, 10, and 7. Getting in place can be a bit tricky, just because it is hard to see exactly where it is sitting. Try baking the area and viewing it with baked and surface mesh enabled and you should see a seamless yellow path onto the roof. I had pretty good results with house 1, but house 3 would only work if I created an additional plan on the roof.

 

jlf2n: Learning shading

jlf2n posted a great thread about how to reverse engineer methods for shading. In his post, shading refers to using the color brush to add shadows. You'll also see this sometimes refered to as "grayscaling." Here's his intro:

Being new to the NWN2 toolkit I set out in search of a tutorial to show me a terrain shadowing tricks. I couldn’t find any so I set to dissecting one of the areas that came with the main quest to see what I could see. The process I used was very helpful to me so I thought I would run through it here for you guys.

He goes on to walk you through opening an area from the OC, removing all the shading, and trying to recreate it. A great idea for learning how the people at Obsidian put some of the areas together.

Check out the thread on the nwcitade here:
http://nwcitadel.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1158

Creating seamless areas

ScreminMemes and Miserere posted some great advice in the Toolset Q&A thread on the official forums on making seamless exterior areas:

Quote: Posted 10/13/06 02:03 (GMT) by ScreminMemes
The off limits area is there to create the illusion of seamlessness. All you need to to to make your areas seamless is copy one then move it to the side until the last two in-bounds rows from the original area are the first two out of bounds in the next area.

Quote: Posted 10/16/06 17:28 (GMT) by Terror2001
I've been looking for a way to copy sections of a map to create this seamless effect but have yet been unable to. I understand the copying of the map to a new map, but how do you select and move a group of tiles?

Don't try to copy sections of a map. Instead:
(1) Make a copy of the entire area (i.e. copy the area itself, not the terrain and stuff in it). Just select the area in the area list, right-click, and select copy.

(2) Identify the edge you want to carry over (let's say it's the North edge of the original area, so you want to preserve the *North* edge of the new area as well).

(3) Select and delete all objects that do not fall within the 4 tiles along the edge you are preserving (otherwise all those objects will collapse to the new edge when you do the next steps, which will screw up the areas you want to preserve). So in our example we delete all objects that are not within 4 tiles of the *North* edge of the new area.

(4) Use the Resize option (I think it's in the Edit menu, but I don't have the toolset in front of me right now) and reduce the size of the edge *opposite* the one you are preserving until you have only 6 tiles in width, total (4 of which will be off limit areas). The 2 off-limit areas from the other area will now be the walkable areas of the new area. In our example, we would remove most of the tiles on the *South* edge of the new area.

(5) Use the Resize option again to increase the size of the area back to what you want it to be, this time on the other edge. Now you have extended out the walkable area in the other direction and can build it up however you want. So, in our example we would add several tiles to the *North* edge. Et voila.

Think of the process as kind of inch-worming your way from area to area. You move to a new area (by making a copy), contract the area to eliminate the parts you are leaving behind, and then extending again in the direction you are moving. Does that make sense, or do I sound like I'm on crack?

Anyway, hope that helps. I've tried this and it works like a champ. Where this method falls apart is if you try to create four areas arranged in a square pattern, since the fourth area you make will only be able to "inherit" the edge of one of its two adjoining areas, not both. That's where you'd have to do some fudging.
_________________
Miserere
Project Lead (Retired)
Tales of the Pendragon (Defunct)

You can find the conversaion here:
http://nwn2forums.bioware.com/forums/viewtopic.html?topic=502381&forum=1...